It is only a little over five decades since Sidney Hook stated, “Catholicism is the oldest and greatest totalitarian movement in history.” Some years after Hook's remark, Paul Blanshard declared, “You cannot find in the entire literature of Catholicism a single unequivocal endorsement by any Pope of democracy as a superior form of government.” Much has happened – both in theory and in practice – to mitigate the suspicion of the inherent authoritarianism of Roman Catholicism on the part of Americans of Protestant, Jewish, and secular backgrounds. Yet there is still a lingering suspicion that there remains what Weber called an “elective affinity” between a hierarchical church organized around a leader not popularly elected and authoritarianism in politics, a basic opposition between Catholicism and liberal democracy. While the stereotyped thinking of a Hook or a Blanshard receives little credence today, it may still be useful to examine the historical and contemporary record on the relation of Catholicism and democracy in order to arrive at a more nuanced view.

This chapter will begin by reviewing that relationship historically, sketching patterns of ecclesial theory and practice in the early church and the medieval period, followed by discussions of the defensive centralization of church governance that took place during and after the Reformation, of the church's reaction to the Enlightenment and to continental liberalism, and of the new tendencies of the last hundred years in the social teachings of the church. Second, the emergence of the Christian Democratic movement will be outlined.

Aquinas's political and legal theory is important for three reasons. First, it reasserts the value of politics by drawing on Aristotle to argue that politics and political life are morally positive activities that are in accordance with the intention of God for man. Second, it combines traditional hierarchical and feudal views of the structure of society and politics with emerging community-oriented and incipiently egalitarian views of the proper ordering of society. Third, it develops an integrated and logically coherent theory of natural law that continues to be an important source of legal, political, and moral norms. These accomplishments have become part of the intellectual patrimony of the West, and have inspired political and legal philosophers and religious and social movements down to the present day.

Nicholas of Cusa, in Latin Nicolaus Cusanus, was born in 1401 at Kues on the banks of the Moselle river between Trier and Koblenz. His father was a moderately well-to-do boatman and vineyard owner who served on juries and lent money to the local nobility. There is no proof that Nicholas studied with the Brothers of the Common Life in Deventer, Holland, as many of his earlier biographers assert, although he was influenced by the devotio moderna that they represented, and a scholarship, the Bursa Cusana, named after him, was established in the seventeenth century at Deventer. Following a year's stay at the University of Heidelberg in 1416, he pursued higher education in canon law at the University of Padua from 1417 until 1423. After receiving a doctorate in canon law (doctor decretorum) he returned to Germany and enrolled at the University of Cologne in early 1425. He seems to have studied philosophy and theology at Cologne and he practiced and probably also taught canon law. (In 1428 he turned down an offer of a professorship in canon law at the University of Louvain.) In 1427 and 1429–30, Cusanus travelled to Rome as the secretary of the Archbishop of Trier and established contacts with the Italian humanists who were interested in his reports of having discovered lost classical manuscripts in German monastic and cathedral libraries.

Some years ago, the late Ewart Lewis observed that it was likely to be a long time before the “average professor of political theory will turn to his well-underlined copy of Nicholas of Cusa's De concordantia catholica with the same facility with which he turned to Aristotle's Politics.” This first complete translation of the Concordantia into English is an effort to make this major work of political and eccelesiological theory available to contemporary scholars. Before its publication the only English translation was a sometimes inaccurate excerpt containing the sections dealing with the theory of consent and Nicholas' proposals for a system of representative councils in the medieval empire. The lack of a definitive Latin text, the length of the work, and the considerable linguistic problems arising from Cusanus' awkward style and defective knowledge of Latin have long deterred scholars from undertaking the formidable task of translation.

The problem of establishing the Latin text has been resolved, thanks to the work of dedicated German scholars. In 1928, Professor Gerhard Kallen agreed to prepare a critical Latin edition under the auspices of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. Books I and II were published in 1939 but the publication of Book III was delayed by World War II and it only appeared in 1959.

PREFACE

268. If anyone should care to trace out from the beginning the foundations that are both necessary and useful for our purpose, he should look to the principles on which they are based – those of Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and all the other philosophers who have written about well-ordered political, economic, and monarchic regimes. Natural laws precede all human considerations and provide the principles for them all. First, nature intends every kind of animal to preserve its physical existence and its life, to avoid what would be harmful and to secure what is necessary to it, as Cicero concludes in the first book, third [fourth] chapter of De officiis. For the first requirement of essence is that it exist. Therefore for any essence to exist, it possesses inborn faculties designed for this purpose – instinct, appetite, and reason. Hence it happens in different ways in nature that various means are implanted by natural instinct for the purpose of existence and self preservation. On this basis Aristotle concludes in the last chapter of the seventh book of the Politics that every art and discipline exists to supply what nature lacks.

269. But from the beginning men have been endowed with reason which distinguishes them from animals. They know because of the exercise of their reason that association and sharing are most useful – indeed necessary for their self-preservation and to achieve the purpose of human existence.